Taking Up Serpents
by Afia
Summary: "In my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents" Tim's life was forming a tidy circle: shoot someone on the job, have his motives questioned, get cleared and get back to work. But this time, things aren't so straightforward.


**Taking Up Serpents**

_Now_

The locals took care of fetching Delroy's body and Rachel, Raylan and Tim were left to pick up the pieces – or at least the paperwork.

Raylan barely slowed as he passed Tim's desk. "That guy you shot, you good?"

Tim didn't have to think before responding because, well, he was okay. Good might be pushing it, but okay he could claim. "He called it."

"Well, you do need to talk -"

"I've got Rachel-"

"-You've got Rachel." They spoke in unison. Tim looked down at his desk and swiped at an imaginary line of dust on his keyboard.

"No pink," Rachel said to Raylan's retreating form.

"Hm?" Raylan looked over his shoulder.

"The baby's room – you're going to want to stay away from pink."

"I'll keep that in mind." Raylan walked through the doors

"I could have told him that," said Tim to no one in particular. He shifted the papers on his desk. There was a gnawing in his stomach and though unsure that it was truly hunger, Tim decided food was his best bet. He leaned over the partition to catch Rachel's eye.

"Lunch?"

"It's eleven AM."

"I know. Lunch?"

In a concession to the early hour – and the fact that he practically drags her out of the office – Tim let Rachel choose their lunch place. She picked a small restaurant on the edge of UK's campus, a couple of miles from the courthouse. It's peaceful inside, some folksy music with banjos – _christ, why? -_ piped over the sound system. The seating along one wall is a reclaimed church pew. Heavy glass bottles are filled with water and perched on each table, waiting for thirsty customers. Their waiter was skinny and clad in plaid and mustachioed. It's not a place Tim would ever pick, and by the look their waiter gave them, they're not the usual clientele.

But Rachel, of course, was right. The food was excellent, and he was halfway through his prosciutto and caprese sandwich before he paused to tell her so.

"Of course I'm right."

She was quiet for a moment, twisting her earring. Tim asked her about Joe because he felt like he should, but she just huffed and so, instead, they talked about the past week.

"You really threaten to sing show tunes at Raylan?"

"Yep." She smiled, clever-like, and Tim thanked his lucky stars that he had enough sense not to piss her off. Too much.

He can tell there's something she wants to say, but she's mulling it over, making sure she gets it right in her head before she lets it pass her lips. Careful Rachel.

X X X

Cassie stood resolute in the road, watching Boyd get his face pushed into the dirt and his body be abused by the Harlan County Sherriff's deputies. She recognized an older man as the one who held her brother's body hostage until she could find the funds to have him cremated. The ashes were returned to her in an ugly steel urn.

Cassie thought of that urn as a boot collided with Boyd's chest again. She thought of that urn as she met his eye. Thought of its chill smooth edges and its gray contents. Nothing left of the flame-haired preacher who was her brother. Nothing smooth about Boyd's face this morning, and that makes her glad. She didn't even feel guilty for feeling it. She turned to her truck, feeling the fingers of rage start to unclench from around her heart.

X X X

_Then _

They had sat across from each other, Cassie feeling small and adrift. She kept seeing the bullet entering that man. It had made his body leap backwards, like a puppet on pantomime strings. She felt cornered, as she had that afternoon when the man's fingers had closed around her throat and she'd thought for sure those were her last moments on this earth. She'd asked him if he felt trapped but it was he who had clenched his fists around her throat and trapped her. _Don't you want to be free from the devil's grip_, she'd asked, only to be snared like an animal herself.

This was twice now the young man had saved her life. Twice he had appeared when he was most needed, as though he'd been summoned by some power. She met his eyes across and the table and exhaled slowly. He was worrying his lip, staring down at his hands. She owed him the truth.

"Deputy, there's something else I need to tell you. Ellen May told me that she'd been party to a man's violent passing. Said she'd helped get rid of the body."

He stared levelly at her across the table. "Did she kill him? Or just help hide the body?"

"She didn't say she helped kill him and knowing Ellen May as I do, well, I don't think she has it in her."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," Cassie paused to gather her thoughts. "I think she's too used up by life to ever get mad enough to kill someone. There ain't that much fire left in her."

He stared at her again, flat-eyed, lips pressed together tightly.

"Don't have to be mad to kill someone, just motivated."

She thought he was assessing her, trying to figure out what motivates her. She decided she was too honest earlier when she'd admitted to wishing his bullet had found its way to Boyd.

"That's true," she says slowly, "but I don't think Ellen May killed this man. She knows where the body is, though, and she told me before that man showed up." She met his eyes. His face was flat, curiously impassive. He was still sizing her up. _He's a lawman,_ she reminded herself. _Anything you say can be used against you…or Ellen May._ But the red bloom of blood across his shirt also reminded her that she's heard things today which he probably wouldn't want repeated. Cassie thought back to the first time she met him. Colton Rhodes had had her lifted by her throat, and the Deputy Marshal saved her life and then inquired after a murdered friend. "He really kill your friend?"

The man across from her faltered, just so. His eyes were pierced her, their earlier laconic gaze gone, and she fought the desire to look away, break contact.

"Seems that way."

"Your friend…Mark? What was his part in all this? He another lawman?"

A single shake of the head. "Soldier."

He reasserted the role of inquisitor before she can ask another question. "About that body – Ellen May say who it was?"

"No."

"Not even a first name?"

"No, nothing."

"But she told you where they disposed of the body?"

"Yes, she said they dumped him down an old split shaft off Black Lick Road.'

"She say which shaft?"

"No, just that it was out of use."

"Excuse me a minute." He held up a finger and then strode away from the table. She watched him walk across the clearing to the state patrolman who had first questioned her. Cassie watched them talk and wondered what was coming next.

He made his way back over, back straight but worrying his lip again, and jingling the car keys in his hand. He met her eyes briefly before looking away, off into the woods. Cassie frowned; his eyes had reverted to their flat state.

"I'll drive you home, Ms. St. Cyr."

The man who asked her what she was doing next was gone, replaced by this stiff man who called her by her last name and guided her to the car with a hand on her back, like she couldn't find it on her own. Or like she'd run.

Cassie was staying in the cottage of one of Billy's former parishioners, just a mile down the road or a short hike if you cut through the woods. Truth be told, she had felt the familiar tug to bolt – not because she was scared of this man – but because running was her default. Billy was the preacher, she was the pragmatist. She always knew when it was time to run. She was pretty damn sure that time was now.

Instead, she had kept her peace, and let him direct her to the car. Inside the Chevy it was cool and quiet and she had pressed her forehead against the passenger window, thankful for the chill glass. She felt flushed and burning even as a shiver went through her. She thought of the venom scorching through Billy's veins, a certain fire she had never wanted him to know.

His voice cut through her thoughts.

"Would you ever consider taking up ministering, start up services again in your brother's church?"

She sees Billy dying on that dirt floor, and the man today, sagging against the pew. She's embarrassed that her breath hitched and the words were a struggle.

"No." She thinks of Ellen May's confession. "It's been washed in too much blood."

He makes a sound low in his throat which she took as understanding.

X X X

_Then_

He dropped her in the front yard and watched a small, dirt-colored dog come from the porch to meet her. He watched her cross the porch and go in before he feels like he can face the drive back to Lexington.

His eyes felt gritty and he was heavy, weighed down, like he was walking up a hill with a fifty pound pack. It was late when he got back to the office, but Art is waiting for him.

"There's a lot of paperwork you'll have to get through in the next few days. Might as well start now."

So, Tim signed the paperwork that Art pushed in front of him, relinquished his gun, and changed into the spare shirt he kept in his locker, ditching his old one in the trash. The blood would never come out of that shirt. Tim hardly ever wears white and he thought ruefully of the pile of dirty laundry at home –all dark – waiting to be washed.

He and Art joined the others at the bar where Rachel and Raylan and the rest of the office are gathered. The Drew Thompson affair had been good for a lot of careers and the mood was jovial.

Rachel bought him a bourbon and watched him closely. She stepped up to him, so her lips were almost at his shoulder, and pretended to pick lint from his shirt.

"It went down like in your report?"

He raised his eyebrows at her. She one-upped him with a perfectly arched brow. Never play a master at her own game. "Tim?"

"Nah, I just felt like a bit of target practice."

She stared at him for a moment, brows raised. She knew Tim, could easily find the truth behind each sardonic response, so Tim had to school his features.

"Then it's a good kill." She clinked her glass against his and they drink.

Tim swallowed the bourbon. His secret – well, one of them – was that he didn't overly care for the stuff. But Kentucky wasn't exactly the sort of place where you can admit that and not suffer the consequences, so Tim kept it to himself.

Tim saw Nelson in earnest conversation with Raylan. Rachel drifted away to speak with Laurie. Tim's thought drifted towards Colton Rhodes. What had brought them together in that nowhere spot of earth? Why there, where they ended with guns pointing at each other when they could have just as easily met in the Sandbox, with guns pointed at a common enemy? Kentucky or Afghanistan, they were both sucked into the shit.

"Hey Tim!" Nelson waved from the bar, and raised his bottle. Tim schooled his features into a simulacrum of a smile and raised his glass in reply. It helped to pull him away from his thoughts but he felt like his hold on the present was tenuous, liked he might be sucked down in the quagmire of his own memories at any moment.

His hands found purchase in his pockets and wrapped around the sunglasses. Nelson's arm was suddenly around his shoulders. He was three drinks in already and gregarious for it. Tim decided it was time to catch up with his colleagues. He moved to the bar to get another drink for himself and Nelson, and one for Rachel too, but his mind was hopping back to that afternoon, Rhodes' heavy corpse and Cassie St. Cyr, her hair a coronet of light as she disappeared through her front door.

X X X

_Now_

Art surveyed his kingdom. It'd been a string of late nights and it was showing on his marshal's faces. The Indianapolis office had promised a spare marshal, but she was yet to arrive, and after coming down from the high of the Thompson capture, the office was subdued. Art felt it too, in his knees and, god help him, his hips. Those stairs in the abandoned school had viciously reminded him how much time he'd spent sitting at a desk these past ten years.

Dunlop tapped at his computer, pen pursed between his lips. Rachel was out at the motel, keeping eyes on Ellen May. She'd be spelled by a local cop at two pm; regs say she could go home then, but Art knows his prodigy. She'll walk in no later than 2:25, cool and unrumpled despite hours in a car, give her report, check her emails, read the bulletins and then, after all that, she'll head home.

Tim was there at his desk, looking for all the world like he's reading a fugitive folder. Art knows he hasn't turned a page in ten minutes. Art considered the report sitting on his desk. _No time like the present,_ he thought, and hollered, "Tim! Get in here."

Tim stood without looking at him and walked into his office, unhurried, back straight. He eyes, though, look like someone's rubbed sand in them. Art thinks to the other night in the pub. The amount of shots he saw bought for Tim would've been more than enough to get him lit, but had they been enough to leave him looking like shit two days later?

Tim puts on a face of innocent inquiry that fell just short of believable. "Yes, Chief?"

"Shut the door."

Art cut to the chase. "What the hell is this?"

Tim's eyes followed Art's hand to his report.

"Looks like my report on the Rhodes shooting, Chief."

"It does look like a report, doesn't it?" He waited for Tim to acknowledge this statement; Tim doesn't, so Art prompts again. "This is your signature here on the last page, isn't it?"

Tim leaned forward, glanced at the paper. "Yep, looks like my chicken scratch."

"Tim, did someone force you to sign this against your will?"

"No."

"So no one was holding a gun to your head, when you wrote this up and signed it?"

Tim didn't so much as blink. He did his best impression of a statue, except for an almost invisible shake of the head.

Art dropped the report back back to his desk.

"This looks to me like a load of bullshit. Deceitful shit." He vigorously rubbed his head and gestured for Tim to take a seat.

"Tim, I've got to ask you: are you Spiderman?"

"Chief –"

"Because you'd have to have spidey senses to know to head to that church right then to find Ellen May and stop Crowder's thug."

"Chief, you know I'm a crummy writer."

"You don't have to be a good writer to tell the damn truth!"

Art was angry and was giving Tim his best look that says he's had it Up To Here. He watched as Tim shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable but not about to back off his story.

"I waited for the Staties to show up and start searching Noble's. They didn't need my assistance, so I thought about where else Ellen May might have gone if she was spooked. I remembered Shelby saying she'd left off whoring and taken up with a holiness church that had pitched up in the woods outside of Harlan." Tim paused, turning his hand in the air slowly. "Of course, that was before she went into hiding with Shelby, but I thought it was worth checking out."

"Again, are you Spiderman?"

"No, just lucky."

"Lucky?"

"Kept Boyd's guy from killing those women, didn't I?"

Art leaned back in his chair, gave Tim the illusion of space, and clasped his fingers together.

"That day on the road," Art waved his hand behind him, signifying the past events, the Kentucky IEDs, "when you said your paths had crossed, what did you mean?" Art left the conversation about PTSD for another day.

Tim had already considered this and had thought it prudent to omit the part about drawing Colton off Cassie St. Cyr the second time he met him.

"I was helping Raylan with a thing down in Deliverance. Rhodes was helping Crowder. We got to talking when I realized we were both ex-Army."

"Mm-hm."

They stared at each other across the table, neither giving an inch until an exasperated sigh escaped Art's lips. He knew there was more than what Tim had included in his report but for now he was content not to press him.

"Well, both the prostitute and the church lady say Rhodes was raising on you. You'll be cleared, but you know there will be an internal investigation, like with every shooting. It'll be a formality like after the thing with the Bennetts. Just be prepared."

"Yes, sir."

"You ready to get a new gun? You'll need a new one before you go out on the protection detail for Ellen May. I got time to check something out of the armory for you now."

They had made their way to the armory then and Tim got the same loaner he'd had after the Timmons shooting. Tim's life was forming a tidy circle – shoot someone on the job, have his motives questioned, get cleared. The prospect of yet another IA investigation got his neck hairs standing up. It was never fun, being that closely examined, but this one made him feel a wrench of anxiety. He was scared to have his motives examined too closely. Hell, he was scared of examining them too closely himself. In the end, Tim had gotten what he wanted – scared as he was to admit it – he'd gotten to put Colt down. But Colt had got what he wanted, too, an out with no consequences for himself. That gave Tim pause.

X X X

Cassie St. Cyr believed in signs. She was the child of itinerant preachers, and grew up watching her daddy take up snakes and drink poison. She knew, more often than not, that it was her mother's hand in it that kept her father alive, not some sign from god, showing his hand in things. Still, there was a small part of her left that believed in signs and wonders.

Cassie packed crates and planned. She didn't know what she'd do next or where she'd be doing it but she knew it was time to move on, time to shed this life. Harlan had taken her brother and her livelihood, such as it was. Almost taken her life, too, and if that wasn't a sign to get out she didn't know what was.

She contemplated the snakes in their boxes. She hated them about as much as Billy had loved them. She never felt any ecstasy, religious or otherwise, when she'd handled them. They're instinctive, prehistoric creatures and she grudgingly admired their ability to survive; to be so small but to be able to take down a grown man makes you mighty, indeed. Yet she can envision no end for them that didn't involve blood.

Cassie considered the shovel in the corner of the tent, but then the thought of the mess involved in taking off each of their heads, with the body wriggling and hemorrhaging, made her reconsider. She would set them free in the woods instead.

Maybe she'd save the meanest canebreak rattler for the woods in Boyd Crowder's backyard.

X X X

"She is getting awfully agitated," the Fayette County sheriff's deputy muttered to Tim before they entered Ellen May's motel room. Tim kept his mouth shut as the lieutenant explained to Ellen May that Deputy Gutterson would be taking over for the next few hours.

Ellen May did look flustered. There was color high in her cheeks and her eyes were red-rimmed. The fingers of her left hand were drumming constantly against her opposite arm. She looked liked she'd been using, but Tim knew she'd been under constant surveillance these past few days. So, this was just Ellen May, unraveling. Tim recognized those signs, too, the slow unspooling of the adrenaline high. Ellen May was finally coming down, and coming to terms with being sold like chattel to the butcher and nearly be killed in the place where she thought she'd found salvation.

The sheriff's deputy shifted from foot to foot, looked at Tim looking at Ellen May. He confirmed that someone from LPD would be relieving Tim in five hours, and said goodbye, leaving the two of them staring at each other.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," she nodded quickly and clamped her lips shut before she could say anything else.

Tim went out and sat in his car, as protocol dictated. There was only the one door and one window to the motel room, and both are in full view. Tim contemplated the cooler containing his dinner. He tried not to think about the woman imploding on the other side of the door. He sat with his hand on the door handle for a minute before he decided he doesn't need another damn thing keeping him up at night.

She opened the door too quickly after he knocks.

"You need to remember to check the peephole before you open the door. I could have been one of Crowder's men."

He sat in the only chair in the sad little room – worse than the shithole Rayland had previously called home – while Ellen May paced and talked a mile a minute.

"I mean, I gave up my cat! Just left her!"

"I'm sure – what's your cat's name?"

"Belinda."

_That's a weird name for a cat, _but Tim kept that thought to himself. He was already reconsidering his attempt at kindness.

"I'm sure Belinda is fine; in my experience, cats are good at getting what they need in order to survive."

Ellen May looked like her own survival is in doubt.

"I mean, what am I going to do? I just left! Glad I did, don't want you to think I miss suck-" she stopped herself. "What am I going to do? I left everything and I haven't done anything else in years. Don't know a thing about anything." She ran out of steam and flopped on the bed, dragging her fingers through her hair.

"Things will start to make sense eventually." Tim cringed at the empty platitude even as it passed his lip; he'd heard it often enough himself when he was freshly returned to the world that was supposed to make sense to him but just didn't after Afghanistan. He didn't have a lot to offer in terms of motivational speeches, but he wouldn't give her the same shit he heard from folks who didn't understand what it was like to come out of the other side of some serious trouble.

"Your life can be different, so different. You don't have to keep doing what you're doing just because you're already doing it." He frowned at his verbal clumsiness, but for the first time Ellen May focused calmly on him.

"I'm so glad I got right with the Lord, what with all the shit I seen and been a party to…I just wish I knew what to do next. I always had somebody telling me what to do. Delroy, Ava, the preacher, Shelby, Limehouse, Ms. St Cyr. Always got somebody directing me."

Tim sympathized. When he got out of the Rangers it took a while for him to easily make his own choices. He'd suddenly had so many options and no guidance.

They sat in the gathering gloom of the room together. Ellen May had quieted and was picking at her sweater.

"You know your Bible, mister?"

"Not particularly." Tim had never been much for Sunday school.

"What I've done with my life, I don't know if there's enough forgiveness in that book to make up for all I've done wrong. Ms. St. Cyr says I was washed in his blood and that makes me clean, but…"

She trailed off and paced the room again. She reminded Tim of an old lioness he once saw in the remains of the Kabul zoo. The weathered creature had paced her cement enclosure, all patchy fur, frantic eyes and a hitch in her stride. War was just the latest insult in her life. She'd hardly had any fight left in her, but she was desperate, and Tim had found himself frightened of her still.

Ellen May sacred him, too. She had that wild-eyed look, like you might not know what she was going to do next. Tim reviewed what he knew about her: drug user, prostitute, murder witness (and accessory, what with disposing of the corpse he now knows to have been her erstwhile pimp). Ellen May had been on the run and so desperate to escape that she'd hitched her wagon to a wanted fugitive. And she had walked into a literal den of serpents to get saved. So, what did he know about her? Left to her own devices, Ellen May made almost fatally bad choices.

She broke his reverie with a plea, "I need to talk to Shelby."

"That won't be possible."

"Please." She got that panicky look in her eyes that Tim recognized from other survivors. She wanted to press some mythical re-set button; Tim knew there was no such button. Time to talk her down, but before he can even start, she was rambling again.

"Then I want to go home, back to Harlan."

"That won't be possible. Boyd Crowder is still out and likely not feeling kindly towards you."

"I need to talk to Cassie, if I can't talk to Shelby. And I already told y'all everything I know, it's not like they can stop me from talking now."

"Doesn't mean Boyd wouldn't be looking for revenge."

"Revenge is for God." It's the first thing she's sounded sure about.

"Crowder probably thinks he is one."

X X X

Tim was right back outside Ellen May's motel room the next evening, but Rachel was with him this time. The marshal from the Indianapolis office had finally arrived and she and Dunlop pulled prisoner transport, while Rachel pulled witness protection duty, and asked Art if Tim could come along. They're both thankful for the company, and thankful that this week is almost over.

Rachel, of course, hit upon a solution for pacifying Ellen May. Cassie St. Cyr would be coming up to Lexington the next day to give her deposition, just one floor below the Marshal's office. Why not arrange a meeting between her and Ellen May then? Settle Ellen May down a bit, get her to stop thinking of running away. The Kentucky Attorney General was trying to build a case against Crowder and his criminal enterprises, and her testimony could be vital. Ellen May needed to stay put.

"You're a genius."

"I know."

She twisted her earring and he offered to share his string cheese. She accepted, odd for her, and they munched in silence. There were things neither of them were saying. More had happened in the last week than in all of Tim's first year in Lexington.

Tim had spent the last of his teenage years in a war zone. The idea that violence lurked, perpetually, innocuous, until it suddenly wasn't, was not a new concept for him. His job as a Marshal was a lot of paperwork, surveillance, driving, and yes, the occasional gun play, but nothing like a war. But, in the past week, he'd seen a friend destroyed, been trapped by IEDs, and had to shoot first – in a house of worship - to avoid certain demise. Mark had survived a war zone only to be slaughtered in a dealer's apartment in Lexington. Colton Rhodes had survived only to be put down by his own crummy choices and a steady hand. Tim's bullet was simply the conclusion of a series of shitty deeds, karma looping back around and tapping Rhodes on the shoulder.

Raylan had just seen a man put a gun to Winona and talk about killing the baby. Life had gone from reliable to a war zone, and it was pulling Tim back into the shit. He and Colton were two sides of the same coin, with only a few scant choices dividing them at the end. What's to say Tim won't get sucked down into the bog?

X X X

Jimmy considered his options. Not many plays he can make now. Busting Ava out of jail is impossible, even he realized that. But if he wanted to stay in Boyd's good graces, stay employed, hell, stay alive, he was going to have to do something to prove his worth.

Ellen May, on the other hand, was a possibility. Jimmy was pretty sure she and Shelby weren't married – 'less they'd gotten a quickie ceremony at the courthouse. Jimmy snorted at the mental image that conjured, Shelby cuffed and in his tattered Sherriff's uniform, the dumb whore shuffling her feet beside him. Jimmy generally considered himself too good looking to have to pay for sex, but he was no stranger to Audrey's. He liked the cute blonde best but he'd known Ellen May, too. She had called him sweetie and ruffled his hair, like he was a damn dog. Ellen May with her dumb expression and ragged hair. Jimmy saw her, in his mind's eye, pathetic and whimpering. She'll do, but it would be good to get the snake charmer, too. Boyd's not the only one with an ax to grind when it comes to the church in the woods.

Jimmy knew he wasn't a great strategist, so he kept his plan simple. He figured the best way of finding Ellen May would be following the Marshals out of the Lexington office. Jimmy had had multiple entanglements with the law and knew that while a big shot like Drew Thompson might get moved quickly, a small fry like Ellen May would stick around, ensnared in the bureaucracy of criminal justice. He was willing to bet just about anything they had her stashed somewhere around Lexington.

Boyd was monosyllabic when Jimmy tells him he's heading out for the day. Jimmy's got a couple of stops to make before he heads up to Lexington.

X X X

That night, back at his house, Tim sat on the front porch. It was chilly, but the crickets and frogs were making a ruckus and he liked their makeshift choir. There was an empty bottle perched on his chair arm and he was contemplating another – it'd be his fourth – while also thinking he should be a bit more concerned about his drinking. There were nights when he just wanted to be in a stupor, but it takes a hell of a lot more than four beers to get him there. That should bother him. The fact that Art questioned his motives should bother him. But tonight, it was the fact that Colton Rhodes was dead that bothered him. Tim was of two minds on the subject of Colton Rhodes, and that, almost as much as the man himself, left Tim unsettled. That, and Cassie St. Cyr's clear eyes staring at him across from a picnic table had left Tim in a state of unease.

His phone vibrated against his hip.

"Deputy?" The voice was low and almost raspy and he recognized it immediately.

"This is Gutterson."

"This is Cassie St. Cyr."

He waited for her to go on but she didn't.

"Are you alright, Ms. St Cyr?"

"You can call me Cassie. And yes, thank you, I'm fine." There was a pause. "Deputy, I'm coming up to Lexington tomorrow."

"I know."

"You do?" There was a longer pause.

"Is there something I can help you with?" Tim knew he needed to keep this on the level but he wanted desperately to ask what she was planning on saying at her deposition the next day. Will she mention Rhodes earlier visit to her church and Tim's intervention?

"Yes, I need your help. Again. I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" Tim was already searching around with his bare feet for the boots he'd kicked off earlier.

"I seem to need your help regularly. Perhaps someday I'll be able to return the favor. Somebody shot at the church tonight."

Tim froze. "What?"

"Someone took a few shots at the church this evening as I was packing up. I'm fine; all they managed to do was put a few holes in the canvas."

"Are you alright?" He forgot that he'd already asked that.

"Yes, I'm fine." There was steel in her voice.

"Did you see who it was?"

"No, but I know who did it."

Tim didn't ask her to explain; he just wants the bare bones of things right now. "Did you call the police?" He was pulling on socks.

Her laugh was a short, sharp bark. "Yes, I did."

"Well, what'd they say?"

"That it was Sunday in Harlan. That it must have just been folks out hunting, wandered too close to the church. Some stray shots."

Tim would have thought there'd be sheriff's deputies there around the clock, what with all the shit that's gone down there recently.

"They didn't send anyone out?"

"No, not a single person."

"You're not still at the church are you?"

"That's the thing." She trailed off and then started again. "I felt like I needed to get out of Harlan while I still could. But my truck died, and I can't get it started again."

"Where are you now?"

"The rest stop off I-75, just north of London."

Tim checked his watch as he pulled on the second boot, the phone cradled between his cheek and shoulder. "I can be there in an hour. Stay in your truck. Keep the doors locked."

"Thank you."

_This is dumb, dumb, dumb! _Tim's inner monologue advised him. He'd been drinking. It was almost midnight. She was a witness. Art was already on his case. What he should do is call the London police and request that they put her in protective custody. Instead, he called Rachel, so that he could say he did. She's not on call tonight and he knows her phone will be silenced so she can actually get some rest. He let it ring, left a curt message, and headed south.

The scenery around the winding country highway was beautiful, even in the gloom of the night, but Tim was too focused on his destination to recognize it. He seethed at Harlan County's careless response; or rather, their total lack of response. Tim pressed down the accelerator as he ran through a mental list of likely candidates who'd shoot at the church. Boyd was under near constant surveillance and Tim hadn't heard any reports of Boyd going anywhere but his bar and the old Crowder house. One of his lackeys – Tim didn't think he was worthy of the title 'thug' – had gone off radar earlier in the day, but was not considered a serious threat so no one had bothered to follow him.

Tim pounded his steering wheel. _Fucking amateur hour_, Tim thought, without sparing a moment to think why it was making him so angry.

He found her right where she said she'd be, parked under the sole working light in the London rest area off I-75. Her pupils were large discs in the murky night, but she was calm as she climbed into his truck.

"Thank you for picking me up."

"It's in the job description."

She smiled and her eyes said she knew it wasn't.

Their drive back to Lexington was uneventful, but Tim felt like his body has been slammed into fifth gear and he couldn't slow down or stop the whir of electricity under his skin. He was amped, hyperaware, each slowed car a possible IED.

She spoke out of nowhere. "Did you know you were going to shoot that man when you showed up at the church?"

"No," he said, too quickly. "Didn't know he would be there."

"But you knew he killed your friend."

She was asking him now if he'd planned murder, sitting in the same spot where she had once praised him for his mercy.

He could lie, tell her that Rhodes forced his hand (which wouldn't be a complete lie) but her eyes compelled honesty and he said things to her that he knew he might regret.

"That man shed a lot of blood, and he would have kept going. I had to put him down."

"That's very Old Testament f you." Her voice wass light and her eyes were glittering in the dim light. "It seems to me you had no recourse but to shoot that man. He'd come there with evil intent, he had a gun, he was raising it at us. That's all I'll say in my deposition and it'll be the truth."

She met his eyes coolly and unblinking, almost reptilian. They knew each other now.

She touched a hand to his arm – a gesture of understanding or empathy, Tim didn't know which – but it sent warmth through his body which seemed to pool in his lower stomach. He shifted and caught the ghost of a smile on her lips.

X X X

Tim fought his body all morning, and just barely resisted the urge to take a nap in his car, or worse, at his desk. He'd checked Cassie into the same motel as Ellen May, calling ahead to let the LPD patrolman know he'd be coming by. It was four am before he finally crashed in his own bed, his internal alarm waking him at six thirty.

Art had sent Dunlop to fetch Cassie from the motel and deliver her to the courthouse. Dunlop was mostly on transport detail as punishment for letting Raylan take Hunter Mosley. Tim found himself checking the clock on his computer and glancing at his watch as he compiled a list of interview subjects, associates of a woman wanted for identity theft on a grand scale.

Dunlop strolled in, dropping his keys on his desk and shaking Tim from his stupor.

"Hey Nelson!"

The sound of his own voice startled Tim and he ratcheted it down a little. "How was your drive?"

Nelson launched into a story about passing a thoroughbred farm, but Tim cut him off.

"Ms. St. Cyr say anything about Crowder?"

"She doesn't like him, at all." Dunlop's flat Chicago accent made it sound like he was joking.

"Think she'll have much to add to the AUSA's report?"

Nelson nodded. "I think her exact words were 'he's a whoremongering drug pusher who killed my brother.'Juries will eat that up."

"She say anything about Crowder's associate?"

"Which one? The lady in jail in Harlan or the man you shot?"

Tim thought _the man I shot, dipshit _but said aloud "either."

"No, not really." Dunlop grinned. "Didn't you just drive her up from god's country? Should've asked her then if you were so curious."

The subject of discussion between Cassie and Tim had already come up…between Tim and Art. Art had pulled him into his office after hearing about the night's activities.

"What do I look like to you, Tim? Do I look like an asshole?"

"No, sir."

"'Cause I already have one deputy who thinks its fine to screw witnesses, I don't need another!"

"Chief, I'm not…nothing happened."

"Then why the hell she call you in the middle of the damn night?!" Art was building up a good head of steam and Tim saw the wisdom in talking him down quickly instead of messing with him.

"After the shooting at her church, I gave her my card. When the Harlan authorities didn't respond to her call last night, she called me. I got her set up in a motel room."

"Oh, I'm sure you set her up real good."

Art bitched at him for another minute about appropriate Marshal-witness interactions and made sure Tim knew that he'd be very damn upset if anything should happen. He did not extrapolate on what that anything might be and Tim didn't ask.

The day trudged along. Tim fought a constant battle with his eyelids. He was getting old. There was a time, not too long ago, that he could stay up all night raising hell or watching a target, and not feel a thing, but those times were gone. Cassie finished her deposition about four that afternoon and the AUSA's office delivered her back to the Marshal's office. Art had her seated in the conference room, and they talked for what seemed like hours, but really was only twenty minutes. Tim watched, as discreetly as he could, and silently prayed that Art wouldn't force the matter or ask questions that would put Cassie or him in any more of a delicate position than they were already in. Art was good at his job – you don't get to his position without being so – and Tim knew his relaxed, folksy manner hid a sharp intellect and an even sharper bullshit detector.

So, Tim was surprised when Art summoned him to his office.

"What's up, Chief?"

Art waved vaguely at the conference room. "You can take her to the motel to visit with Ellen May if you're still hung up on that idea. I'd send Rachel but she's not due to be back from Big Sandy for a while yet."

Tim nodded.

"I'll send Rachel out to meet you at the motel as soon as she's back. She can transport Ms. St. Cyr to another hotel. The AUSA wants to keep her near until they have a better read on the situation down in Harlan."

"Why Rachel? I'll be right there, I could take her."

"I wouldn't want you to miss out on another night of sleep." Art sat down at his desk, and started typing, signaling an end to their conversation. Tim headed towards the conference room door.

"Tim?"

Tim froze, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Art had an indolent grin on his face. "She's interesting."

Tim didn't know what to say to that so he didn't say a thing.

Tim and Cassie didn't exchange a single word outside of basic pleasantries. In the car, he paused, keys midway to the ignition, and asked the question that he promised himself that he wouldn't ask.

"How'd it go?"

"Really well." Her smile was genuine and wide and it made the ball of anxiety in Tim's chest unfurl. For the first time in a week he actually believed that things might work out.

X X X

Jimmy waited outside courthouse, Natty Light cans and Slim Jim wrappers forming a patina of refuse around his feet. His truck stank. Wallace was snoring gently in the seat next to him. Jimmy had managed to convince Wallace, his second cousin, to join him. Wallace was an idiot but a decent shot and handy in a brawl. Big as a house, too. He's one of those guys you were shocked made it to adulthood and then kept making it to another birthday, all limbs accounted for, only a few teeth missing. Jimmy figured if his plan went as it was meant to he'd need the extra set of hands.

The courthouse doors opened and Jimmy recognized Cassie St. Cyr's bright hair. She walked alongside the blond Marshal and climbed into a dark SUV. Jimmy smacked Wallace in the gut with the back of his hand. "Wake up!"

They pulled out of the courthouse lot slowly. The dark Chevy had moved a block ahead and cars had filled in behind it. They meandered across Lexington and almost lost the car in rush hour traffic. They followed it to a motel on the north side of town. The motel sprawled along a city block, low and sleazy. Jimmy eased off the gas and drove past the lot where the Chevy turned in.

"What are you doing?"

"Watching them, you idiot. I want to know Ellen May is there before we jump them."

They pulled into the far end of the parking lot, with a clear view of room 1013 where the Marshal and the snake charmer were now knocking. The door opened and Jimmy smiled as he recognized Ellen May's scraggly hair and pointy chin. The snake charmer and Ellen May, done in one day. Boyd would be happy, and Jimmy would be back in favor.

The LPD cruiser pulled out of the lot with a wave from the Marshal.

"Let's move."

X X X

Tim was restless, ready for the day to be over, but Ellen May's relief at seeing Cassie was palpable. It made him happy that this one thing had gone right.

Ellen May sat on the bed, Cassie perched on the edge. They were deep in discussion in hushed tones. He was sitting in a rickety metal folding chair, trying not to eavesdrop. Tim stepped to the door, signaling to the women that he'd be outside. Cassie met his eyes over Ellen May's head and smiled.

He leaned against the Chevy. The early evening sun felt good. The motel was quiet and Tim contemplated the evening stretching out before him. He looked across the long sprawl of the motel parking lot and recognized a man walking towards him. It was a vague sort of recognition that comes when you've seen photos of a person but never met them.

Recognition dawned about the same time the man smiled. "Oh shit- "

The butt of a gun collided with the back of his skull, which caused his face to collide with the pavement. He laid there only a moment, dazed, before he flipped over. He scissored his legs around the ankles of his attacker, which brought the man down against the opposite car.

Tim rolled upright and darted to the back of the SUV, where he crouched out of sight of Boyd's men.

_Fuck fuck fuck, _he thought as he drew his gun. _Fuck! _He felt the shattered remains of his phone against his hip. He could no longer see the man who had attacked him, or the man who approached from across the parking lot, who he now recognized as one of Boyd Crowder's minions. He peeked around the taillight of his truck. Bullets shrieked past him, close enough to be of concern. He rolled to the other side of the tailgate and peeked around there. His attacker was gone.

The motel room door opened and he saw Ellen May's face pressed against the frame. Tim opened his mouth to shout "get back" but she was jerked backwards into the room and the door slammed before he could say anything.

Tim crouched along the side of his SUV. If he could figure out where the big man was he could deal with him. Then, he could focus on the shooter. He started to creep around the SUV, trying to stay out of the sightline of the shooter. Suddenly he was face-to-face with his attacker. For a big man, the attacker was quiet. He had his gun grasped in one hand. They were so close, pressed between the two cars, that Tim didn't have the chance to get a shot off before the big man brought his clenched fist down on Tim's hand, which forced him to drop his gun. Tim didn't think then, just grabbed both of the man's wrists. He slammed them together and down. The big man's gun, in turn, clattered to the pavement.

The man broke Tim's grip, punched him once and again before Tim ducked, stepped to the left, and punched the man. He aimed for the man's guts. The man doubled over, exposing his side, and Tim jabbed with his elbow, aiming for his kidneys. He kicked the big man, finally getting him down on the pavement. Tim reached down to retrieve his gun and swung around.

He was staring down the black barrel of a gun.

The blond man holding the gun gave Tim a shit-eating grin.

"Hello, Marshal. Drop the gun."

Tim let his piece fall to the asphalt. He heard the big man struggle to his feet behind him.

"Where's Givens?"

Tim said nothing.

"You're seriously out here alone?" The man let out a bark of laughter. Tim's mind raced. The man's name was dancing around the periphery of his thoughts.

Tim stepped forward, and the man took a step back.

"Hey Wallace," the blond man said, "you think we should tie him up, take him with?"

Before Wallace could reply, Tim spoke up. "Hey Wallace, you know it's a federal offense to kidnap a federal officer? You'll do a mandatory minimum of twenty years."

Wallace just grunts from behind them.

"Wallace, don't mind him, it's an offense to kidnap anyone. We aren't going to keep him long." The blond had a brutal curve on his lips. "Tie him up."

Tim's hands were bound behind his back. Tim felt slightly separated from himself at that moment, like he was watching from the sidelines. It felt like his heart was beating in his head, knocking against his skull. A roiling sensation grabbed his stomach and he vomited then.

Maybe a minute had passed since the whole thing started, but the two men were obviously worried, and moved like men on fire, all rushed steps and jerky movements. Tim spat and watched them in a daze.

"Put him in the car, Wallace. I'll grab the women."

Wallace started to push Tim away from the SUV, but things happened very quickly then. The motel room door jerked opened; Tim twisted in time to see Cassie bring the flimsy folding chair down on Wallace's head once, then again and again, her hair flashing about her, until Wallace dropped.

The man in front of him raised his gun, anger scrawled across his face. He hadn't counted on the women putting up their own defense.

Behind Tim a woman yelled "Move!"

There was nowhere for Tim to go but down, but he didn't go down fast enough. He didn't even see the flare of the man's muzzle, but he felt the bullet's bite.

Tim slumped down to his knees, then his side. He saw Ellen May standing just past his feet. A gun was clasped between her steady hands, a serene expression on her face. His eyes closed, and when he opened them again he was surprised to see the blond man on the asphalt, too, not too far away from where he lay. _Jimmy, his name is Jimmy_. It finally came to Tim, and he would have laughed at the way the mind hid and revealed information if he didn't suspect that it would hurt too damn much.

There was a thin face above his then, blond hair and cloudy eyes, with a streak of blood along the cheek. She smiled at him and said he'd be okay, and he believed her.

_Later_

Tim, groggy in the hospital, had a string of visitors. Art, Rachel, Raylan, even his overly solicitous septuagenarian neighbor. The concussion was almost worse than the bullet wound. The bullet had gone clean through his side, and missed anything major. When his doctor cheerily informed him of this, Tim drawled "Yeah, but it still hit me," feeling glib but too drugged to be funny.

Raylan teased Tim about needing to copy him in all things, right down to hair style and wounds. Tim was mostly too tired to deal with Raylan's bullshit so he just flipped him off. Art hovered, most afternoons, and drove Tim home when he was released. He'd told Tim the whole story while Tim was still in the hospital, how Rachel had pulled into the parking lot just in time to see Ellen May scoop up Wallace's gun and shoot Jimmy. Unfortunately, Jimmy still managed to get off a shot, hitting Tim, before Ellen May dropped him. Jimmy was shot off-center, in his shoulder, and was recovering in the same hospital, two floors down. Ellen May had sat on the mountain of a man until back up arrived, and Cassie had pressed her sweater to Tim's side before the EMTs whisked him away.

"That'll be an interesting hearing. A witness shoots an accomplice of Boyd Crowder's to protect the Marshal meant to be protecting her." Art laughed, short and soulless. He had been bringing his stress ball to the hospital during his afternoon visits. Tim, drugged and loopy, had found himself feeling sorry for the inanimate ball of rubber and the thorough work out it was surely getting from Art.

There was more happening than Art would share with Tim, and Tim knew the whole thing, start to finish, was full of mistakes. His mistakes. It was agreed that Jimmy and Wallace had probably found the motel by following him from the courthouse. Tim seethed at himself. His mind had been on Colton Rhodes and the pretty woman sitting next to him and because of all that, he'd been shot. Was this karma looping around and tapping _him_ on the shoulder?

He was released from the hospital and was instantly bored on medical leave. Rachel brought him meals and books and sat on the porch with him, sharing office gossip but resolutely skirting the topic of Harlan and all its attendant players. Raylan dropped by with pizza and his Netflix password; Tim felt a little embarrassed for Raylan, after he saw the crap in his queue. Tim managed to avoid beer, the doctor's chastisements about mixing and alcohol and antibiotics sticking with him.

It'd been two weeks since the shooting and Tim looked forward to being back at work the following week. It'd be good to get away from his own thoughts for a while. The quiet of his house left him with huge amounts of time to contemplate his mistakes, and sometimes he got trapped, with images repeated over and over in his mind's eye. Colton Rhodes' body jumping backwards. The pavement coming up at his face at an odd angle. Cassie's wan face over his, warm fingers on his skin.

Tim would pull himself out of these periods by pointless work around the house. He re-organized his library by cover color instead of author. He cleaned every one of his guns, twice. He watched the dumb shit in Raylan's Netflix queue.

Cassie pulled up one night in front of his bungalow.

It was the first time he's seen her in jeans, not a dress, and he was distracted at the thought of how long her legs were. Her hair was shorter, too. They sat on his porch and drank iced tea, and talked about their lives, about their families. Cassie's father a fanatical, itinerant preacher, Tim's a mean alcoholic. They had both had older brothers, influential in their younger lives but lost to them now. They talked about Kentucky's pretty countryside and its sundry citizens. They didn't once talk of Colton Rhodes. The scraggly brown dog watched them from the cab of her truck.

"You got it fixed?" Tim nodded towards the truck.

"Yeah."

She stared at him a moment, then set down her glass, stood and walked to him. She dropped gracefully onto his lap, and touched her hands to either side of his face. Their lips touched, and his hands crawled up her back. There was a pull in his side which he ignored in favor of the warmth of her lips and the softness of her hair. All was not right with the world, but for that moment, Tim was happy to forget it all.

The morning dawned hazy and cool. Cassie was gone and so was her truck.

* * *

**AN: **Story originally written for the Never Leave Harlan 2013 fic exchance, for Perdiccas, who loves Tim, hurt-comfort, Ellen May and shoot-outs. I tried to get a lot of little things in here for you!

Thanks to our mod Norgbelulah for running such a fantastic exchange.

And finally, a million thanks to my beta, Nemo_R. This work is immeasurably better for having her critique it not once but twice. Thank you, Nemo.

Title is from the ol' Bible:_ They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover._

Mark 16:18


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